


DTF

by st_aurafina



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Ecstasy - Freeform, Happy Ending, Harold Loves His Goofy Dude, John is Goofy on E, M/M, Nightclub, Non-Consensual Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24709771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/pseuds/st_aurafina
Summary: Harold hasn't been to a nightclub since the eighties.
Relationships: Harold Finch/John Reese
Comments: 20
Kudos: 53
Collections: Exchange of Interest 2020





	DTF

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/gifts).



> Inspiration came from here:  
> https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=73365&bookmarkedmessageid=761339  
> The oldest gay club in Helsinki that's still running. It used to be called Don't Tell Mama, but now it's only known as DTM. Maybe because these days you can tell mama?
> 
> Thank you to my betas.

The club was called Don't Tell Father, or DTF, and the music coming from its open doors was physically overwhelming. Even from the outside, Harold felt the bass as a steady push-push-push against his chest. 

"Mr Reese, I don't think this is the kind of place where I am going to fit in," he said, and clutched his laptop a little closer to his chest. There were men queuing at the ropes, dressed in all kinds of lurid dancewear. 

"It'll be fine," John said into his ear. He had to shout to be heard over the top of the music inside the club. "I'm already inside, I've done a little legwork to ease the way for you. All you have to do is show up to the door. I promise." 

Harold took a few steps towards the open doors, where the music was even louder. One of the bouncers caught sight of him and waved him over. When Harold got closer, the man said something to him, something completely inaudible over the music. 

"I'm sorry?" Harold shouted back at him. He pointed at his ears and shook his head. 

The bouncer stepped over the rope and put his mouth close to Harold's ear. "Are you the internet guy?" he said, lips brushing Harold's hair. 

Harold pulled back from the close contact before he realised what had been said, then his expression cleared. "Yes," he mouthed at the bouncer. "Internet, yes." 

The man grinned at him and gave him a thumbs-up. "Great!" he said, and at least that was easy to lip-read. He pointed to the open front door and unclipped the rope. "Go on in!" Harold didn't catch the words, but the ushering gesture towards the inside of the club was clear enough. He stepped into the darkness. 

It wasn't that he'd never been to a nightclub, because of course he had – he'd been in tech in the eighties, after all – but he had been younger then, and, thanks to Nathan's bad influence, lightly blitzed on cocaine. 

Being amongst all these people was a bracing reminder of how much Harold had locked himself away since then. He couldn't even blame it on the ferry bombing, or the project to build the Machine, either. He'd been withdrawing from social contact before the towers came down, and now this place was alien to him as, well. Another planet. 

Someone tapped his elbow and he jumped. It was their number tonight, Sian Kotova, the weekday manager. She was short and muscly, dressed in utilitarian, easy-wash black. She pointed at the laptop. "You here to fix the internet?" she mouthed at him, or at least that's what he thought she said. 

"Yes!" he shouted over the music. "The internet!" It was a good plan, he had to admit. It would allow him to access the infrastructure of the business. It would also get him behind the scenes and hopefully away from the music.

The woman led him along the periphery of the main dance floor, which thronged with gyrating men in varying degrees of undress. He caught sight of John standing in the corner with his arms crossed in the classic bouncer stance, watching the dancers. He wore a t-shirt with DTF plastered across his chest in bright red letters. It didn't fit very well. Or possibly very well indeed, Harold thought, as a pair of very drunk dancers collided with John's body in poorly-feigned clumsiness, then reeled away giggling. John shook his head, and pushed them gently back into the heaving morass of the dance floor. Then he met Harold's gaze and gave him a sly wink. 

Slightly startled, Harold followed Sian through a heavy door padded with foam and covered with felt. It closed with a dull thud behind them and the music dropped to a steady thump of bass and that was all. 

"You know our new bouncer, then?" Sian said. The dark corridor was also padded to absorb noise, and she led him towards the back office. "Oh, this is how we got tech support so quickly, huh. He has a man on the inside." 

Harold laughed at that. "I suppose he does. And yes, we've worked together before. John and I are…" he paused to consider all the things that they are to each other: friends, lovers, workmates. "We make a good team," he said, finally. 

The back office was blissfully quiet, even if there were some questionable stains on the office chair and the desk rocked on uneven legs. Harold propped a wad of folded napkins under the short leg of the desk and spread a few over the sticky surface of the rolling chair. He was working on the software for employee records when the door creaked open. He didn't need to look up, not with his screen split between the employee database and the security camera. 

"Did you get tired of being pawed by the patrons?" he asked. 

John slipped his arms around Harold's shoulders and bent to kiss his ear. "I'd much rather be pawed by you," he said. He held Harold tight, so that all Harold could see from his peripheral vision were bulging biceps in a too-tight t-shirt as John's hands wandered over Harold's chest, tugged at the tie to loosen it. 

Harold spun gently to gaze at him. John was not usually so effusive in the field. "Are you all right?" he said. 

Delighted to be face to face, John bent to kiss him, opening his mouth, working his tongue into Harold's mouth. "You smell great," he said, muffled. "Really great." 

That was not okay – pleasant as it was to be kissed by John, this was neither the time nor the place. Harold eased him back, took in his goofy grin and wide blue eyes. "Oh, John, did someone slip you a Mickey Finn?" 

John deftly evaded Harold's hands so he could nibble at Harold's neck. "Maybe? Sian gave me a mocktail," he said. "But don't worry. I feel great. Really great." 

Harold sighed, and turned away to check on Sian's position in the club. She was nowhere to be seen on the main floor. Not in the back corridors, either, or the storeroom. That left the VIP lounge, and those cameras were password locked. DTF took celebrity privacy very seriously. Harold tried a few password cracks, but it was difficult to concentrate. John by now had two fingers inside Harold's shirt, working the buttons open one by one. 

"John! Please stop," Harold said, rebuttoning his shirt with one hand while he typed. The cameras finally obeyed, and opened a vista of red leather sofas and mirrored walls. There were about forty people in the two levels of the lounge and, yes, there in a secluded upper corner was Sian. She was deep in conversation with two men who were possibly armed, and definitely threatening. "Oh, dear," he said, while John kissed the back of his neck. 

"What?" said John, distracted, lips moving over the place where Harold's hair met his nape. He glanced over Harold's shoulder and made a disappointed noise. "Those are not great guys," he said. "Sian's a nice girl, she should find someone nice." 

"I'll reserve my judgement on that, given she dosed you up without your consent. However, I will agree these gentlemen do not seem to have her best interests at heart," said Harold. "I think we can assume they're the threat to Ms Kotova's life." 

He found the men's faces on various police watch lists before John's mouth on his neck became distracting again. "Mr Reese! Please, could you just –" He batted gently at John's head, and John caught his hands to kiss the fingertips one after the other. Then he dropped to his knees in front of Harold's chair, and made a beeline for Harold's fly. Harold pushed him away, much less gentle now.

"Mr Reese! Oh, for heaven's sake, John. When I was doped up on ecstasy, you were the perfect gentleman with me." 

John rocked back on his heels and snorted. "I was an idiot, is what you're saying. We could have got to fucking a lot earlier, but nooooo, I had to be a gentleman about it." 

Harold tsked, but cupped John's face as he did. "Since you're not exactly at your best, shall I call Detective Fusco in? Ms Kotova still needs protection. I have several texts from someone those men call Boss, ordering them to execute her." 

John shook his head and stood up. "Here," he said, and deposited his gun in Harold's lap. Harold held the thing between his forefinger and thumb to transport it to the desk in safety. John followed the gun with a couple of knives, and a pair of brass knuckles that Harold wasn't even aware he carried. "I wouldn't trust myself with a gun right now, but fists can only do so much damage." He cracked his knuckles to demonstrate. 

"I don't think this is a good idea, John." Harold pulled out his phone, put a call through to Fusco.

While the phone dialled, John grinned and swung his arm like he was warming up for a pitch. "No, Harold. It's a _great_ idea." 

Fusco picked up before Harold could argue further. "Listen, Glasses. I have a life, you know?" 

The padded door thudded closed and John was gone. Harold immediately searched for him, but the back corridors of the club were too dark for the cameras to pick John up, especially if he was being stealthy. 

He went back to his phone call. "Detective, I need you here now! You can lambast me about it later, I promise." 

On the security cameras, he saw John explode into the VIP lounge, fists flying. He took down the two sketchy drug dealers, kneed a pop-star's bodyguard in the crotch, threw a table of drinks at a group of football players. When one of the drug dealers came back at him for a second try, this time with an Uzi, John kicked him over the balcony. 

Detective Fusco was still minutes away. Left with no choice, Harold hurried awkwardly to the VIP lounge, only to find John standing in the midst of a total devastation. Celebrities huddled behind the red leather sofas, one of the footballers had a streaming blood nose, and the remaining drug dealer was dangling from the lighting rig above a dance floor being rapidly abandoned by screaming patrons. On the dance floor itself was the dealer with the Uzi, surrounded by a spreading puddle of red that was illuminated from beneath by the retro light-up panels. 

John held Sian gently by the shoulders. "You're a very nice girl," he said, with great earnestness and only slight slurring of his speech. "You should be at college, not dealing E for Ukrainian thugs who will only stab you in the back. You can do so much better, Sian. We are going to ask my very rich friend for a scholarship to cover tuition and living expenses, and then I am taking him home so he and I can fuck." 

Sian blinked at him. "Um, okay," she said. "I mean, I only did it because grad school isn't cheap, you know? I don't want to be buried in student debt for the rest of my life, and this was just so much easier. And I'm really sorry for doping you up. I thought you were onto me, and I guess you were, but I'm still sorry." 

John enfolded her in his arms and squeezed her tight. "It's okay. I feel great, actually. Really, really great." 

Harold shook his head and sat down on a red leather sofa, propping his laptop beside him to set up financial support for Sian. 

Blue and red lights flashed at the open front doors, identifiable as police because they were not pulsing in time with the dance music. Fusco walked into the club with a squad of uniformed officers and his badge held up. A few seconds later, the music cut off and the house lights came up. 

"I have to go," said John to Sian. "I can't be seen by the police." 

Sian glanced over her shoulder at Harold. "Yeah," she said. "And that other thing you said." 

John followed her gaze, saw Harold, and sighed dreamily. "And that other thing." 

Blushing, Harold took him by the elbow and ferried him downstairs. 

Downstairs, Fusco stood by the body of the Ukrainian thug, shaking his head as the floor lit up square by square under his feet. "Guess it's murder on the dance floor," he said to Harold. "You always hand me the best one liners." He took a step back to read the letters on John's t-shirt. "Well, at least you guys are out in the open about it now," he said. "Now get going before my unis start taking down names."

John, still and gently grinning, flexed his biceps in his too-tight t-shirt, and Harold's face went even more scarlet, glowing red enough that he felt it pulse. 

"Come on," he said to John and towed him out of the club. 

Later, in a safehouse Harold knew to have an extremely sturdy bed and roomy shower, he lay back against a mountain of pillows while John knelt astride his body. They'd made out a lot, they'd rolled all over the extravagantly sized bed, but John seemed to have an endless fascination with Harold's face, and not inclined to do more than stare at it with a goofy smile. Right now, he explored Harold's eyelids with gentle fingertips and soft kisses. Harold had come to the conclusion that John on ecstasy was much more cuddly than amorous, and he was now resigned to being petted like a pedigree cat while John cooed. 

He tapped the red DTF on John's t-shirt. "I believe this is false advertising." 

John ran his finger along Harold's arm all the way to his own chest, and blinked in amazement at the shiny plastic he found there. Harold watched him spell out the letters upside down, then took pity on him, pulling him down to kiss him again. 

"You're so beautiful," John said, tracing Harold's lips as if they had been drawn by a great master. 

Harold laughed. The whole night had been like this, and it was hopelessly endearing. "Thank you. You're very kind." 

"No, you're very kind." John's voice was dreamy. He bent and kissed the tip of Harold's nose. 

Harold passed him a water bottle. "Drink this," he said. "You'll feel much better for it, trust me. I know." 

John's expression lit up even more at this extremely generous gift. "Thank you!" he said, as if he'd been handed the crown jewels. He stared at the water shifting in the bottle, hypnotised by it sloshing back and forth. 

Harold took it back from him and opened it. "Drink, John," he said firmly. It was absurd to think that John had taken down two mobsters, and several angry footballers while in this state. 

When John had taken a few swallows of water, Harold put the bottle on the side table and gently pushed John off his body. John flopped onto his back with a happy sigh, and Harold dragged the covers up over them both. 

"I know you're not going to remember this in the morning," he said to John, as John wormed his way around Harold's body and nestled his head on Harold's chest. He was still wearing the too-small t-shirt. "But I do love you very much." 

"I love you, too." John grinned lazily at him, blinking slowly like a sleepy, happy cat. "It's okay. I promise I'll be DTF tomorrow."


End file.
